The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman PhD and Nan Silver
Do you know about the Love Lab? In the 1980s, at the University of Washington, Dr. John Gottman created what became known as the Love Lab to research the way couples interact with each other. In a groundbreaking approach, Gottman and his co-researcher Robert Levenson, asked couples to live and interact in an apartment where they could be observed and where their physiology could be monitored (heart rate, blood pressure, facial expressions, skin conductivity etc.). Over time, the Gottman Institute was able to gather an enormous body of research identifying the key things that put couples at risk and the key things that sustain couples who stay together long-term.
This book comes out of that research and provides practical and specific information about the seven key principles that sustain relationships and make marriages work well. These are the practices that Gottman observed couples who had strong marriages do with each other consistently and are the ‘secret sauce’ for a successful relationship.
Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way by M. Gary Neuman and Patricia Romanowski
We’ve got one book this month on making marriages work and this second one is for supporting your kids if your relationship ends. This book is based on the author’s Sandcastles program developed to help children cope with divorce and is an invaluable resource for parents who are separating or divorcing. This book answers many of the perplexing questions that face parents who are trying to give their children love and support in the midst of a profoundly changing family system. It provides parents with advice about how to handle key issues across the age-span (each age child needs different information said a different way), how to know when your child needs additional help and how to help with common fears and questions that children often have.